Mos Maeqil
"If you're heading to Maeqil, be careful. The second you enter there are a dozen bastards powering up their blasters and aiming at your face." - Teravin Moltak to Jedi Knight Aneirin Mos Maeqil (Pronounced Moss-May-Quill) was a settlement on Tatooine during the Great Galactic War and the Cold War, being one of the few areas on the planet unaffiliated with neither the Empire nor the Republic. As a result, it was a haven for smugglers, bounty hunters and all sorts of criminals looking to carve out a career for themselves in the underbelly of the Galaxy. Description "Mos Eisley may be the armpit of the Galaxy but Mos Maeqil is its arsehole." - Malysth Azelinus Mos Maeqil was founded upon a small synthetic oasis founded and situated in the vast expanse of the Jundland Wastes. From a distance it was easy to see that it was by far one of the richest cities on such a destitute world, instead of the low quality stone buildings, Mos Maeqil sported large skyscrapers comprised of high quality Duracreet and Transparisteel. Its spaceport was comprised of similar materials and sported only a few private hangars owned by various Hutt Cartels, who held a monopoly on the city and its resources. The town sported a population of 100,000 individuals, varying in terms of species with the most prominent demographic being mostly dominated by Humans but closely followed by Jawas, Hutts and Rhodians, the latter having established the city in the first place under the smuggler Keeno Dran. The centre of the town is known as the "Oasis Quarter", where the 4 heads of the on-world Cartels were located in separate buildings known as the 'Shadow Spires'. Quarters going outwards in a ring, the next being the Commerce Quarter, where business was largely conducted, the Inner Quarter, where the majority of people lived and the Outer Quarter, where the spaceport was located along with the majority of hotels and bars, as well as the massive outer walls. History Mos Maeqil was founded by Rhodian Smuggler Keeno Dran as a safe place to store Tibanna Gas (rationed at the time by the Empire and Republic) in order to get it to several struggling travel firms at a high price. Eventually, the store was discovered by agents of the Hutt Cartels whereupon they tracked Keeno down and offered him a proposition, join the Cartels as an agent to smuggle Tibanna Gas or get shot in the face. Obviously, he chose the former and Mos Maeqil gradually grew as his operation, financed by the cartels, grew larger. Water was of course, a problem, so Keeno decided to engineer a synthetic Oasis, protected from the harsh rays of the sun, which provided a source of water for the community. Being known as the only easily accessible source of clean water, people flocked to the town and it became a place of major investment however was largely forgotten after the Jedi Civil War, as the need for Tibanna Gas died down very quickly. However, going unnoticed by the Galaxy at large and being under the Hutt Cartels makes for a bad combination and the town quickly became a haven for numerous startup Hutt Cartels, now the four families of Mos Maeqil. The most notable being the Makarja family, who began attracting the attention of Bounty Hunters and other types to the fledgling city, over time, Mos Maeqil became the hub of bounty hunting and all criminal activities on Tatooine, as it is today. Around about this time the Inner Quarter was founded, thrown up mostly out of necessity because of an influx of immigrants due to it being a haven for illegal activity which was, on Tatooine, the way of things. It was around this point that it encountered its first great sack by Tusken Raiders who saw the surviving settlement as an opportunity. They massed a warband and fell upon Mos Maeqil like a swarm of locusts, tearing apart everything in their path and leaving none alive. They reached the Inner Quarter before a capable defence was mounted by Tendrin Dran, a descendant of the city's founder, who drove the Tuskens back by rallying the Bounty Hunters and Smugglers into capable sniper and ground squadrons who moved up to the top of buildings and picked off Tuskens from a distance, whilst the ground squadrons set up choke points and filtered the barbarians through one by one, eventually routing the Tuskens. After this, the heads of the families pooled their resources to create massive walls with advanced defences, capable of fending off an entire army if correctly manned, or so the Cartels claim. In its modern day, Mos Maeqil is what many people describe as a 'Fortified toilet' referencing the large walls and water in the centre, with it (metaphorically) being filled with shit. It has, of late, made itself known again by becoming a centre for mercenaries wanting to compete in the various gambits held by the Republic and Empire.